Seminary's Publishing Arm Wraps Up Successful Year

Florovksy SymposiumFr. Benedict (R) discusses a book with His Grace The Rt. Rev. Maxim (Vasilijevic)St. Vladimir's Seminary Press got its start in the 1960s with the release of just a few faculty titles, and has grown enormously over the years to become the largest English–language publisher of Orthodox Christian books, with approximately five hundred titles. We are wrapping up a busy year in which we launched a new website, expanded our offerings of digital and printed titles, hosted book signings with our authors, and traveled extensively with our mobile bookstore.

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Our authors and translators include not only St. Vladimir's Seminary faculty, but many noted Orthodox writers from around the world. In addition to the majority of books originally published in English, those translated from Greek, Latin, German, French, Russian, Armenian, Romanian and several other languages find a place in our catalog. And our books in turn have been translated into other languages, including Russian, Spanish, Korean, Japanese, Chinese, Greek, French, German, Romanian, Italian, Armenian. As a result of this linguistic activity, on a recent trip to exhibit at a book fair in Paris last February, Marketing Manager Dn. Gregory Hatrak and I found that many people know about St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, even if they do not know much else about Orthodox Christianity in the Americas.

Our typical reader is probably an educated person who is not a specialist in theology or philosophy or history, though many Award winning children's titlescholars also buy our books. Perhaps most of our readers are Orthodox Christians, but we reach a much wider audience. Many of our books deal with the early centuries of Christianity, and so talk about a common heritage among Christians. A good number of our titles are used as course books in both religious and secular universities and colleges. We have heard from many people over the years that books published by St Vladimir's Seminary Press paved the way for their entry into the Orthodox Church.

Our current rate of book production is approximately ten new books a year. Our policy has been not to let our books go out of print; consequently we do a large number of reprints each year. We take advantage of current technology for some of these titles to do short runs.

The Press has entered the digital books marketplace, and we now have forty-six titles available in at least two formats. Over the next few years we will digitize our backlist. Many of these titles were produced back in the days of hand-written manuscripts, typewriters, and hot lead type, and as a result the printed works need to be scanned and the resulting files reworked to produce a viable digital book.

The Press was represented at the International Congress of Patristics Studies in Oxford in 2011, and at the First International Orthodox Book Fair in Paris in 2012. In just the last few months, through the efforts of Dn. Gregory Hatrak, our marketing manager, SVS Press books and materials have been displayed at the following events: